Mercenary Road by Hideyuki Kikuchi Read Free Book Online Page B

room lay before him. A sofa, table, and chairs were arranged there. People lay on the ground. Even in the feeble gloom, the carpet was stained with vermilion. One step would undoubtedly wring out some of the lifeblood it’d drunk up from the five bodies.
    “The parents and three kids—the youngest being a girl who was all of four? Just a terrible thing to do,” the left hand kvetched in a voice D alone heard. “Whoever did this should die by inches. Now, then—”
    D’s right hand flashed into action. Tearing through the blue darkness, a gleaming object flew to the right side of the room—making a thud in the kitchen.
    “No response? Next, then,” the left hand continued.
    The wind whistled. A second wooden needle went through the doorway directly in front of D, vanishing into the room in the back.
    “Next.”
    The third one was directed into a room where the walls were covered with bookshelves. It was a study. The needle could be heard jabbing into something.
    “Nothing here, either?” the hoarse voice said. “That just leaves out back and the second floor.”
    D was already headed for the staircase to his left.
    “You send a killing lust out with every one of those needles. Even if it didn’t score a hit, it’d freeze the blood of anyone hiding and almost stop his heart. Not even the most cunning predator could keep from leaping out at something like that. I guess there’s no one here after all.”
    D went up the stairs without making a sound. Behind him, the floor just in the center of the cluster of corpses stealthily began to rise. It was a man covered with a cloth that was the same color as the floor. He had a shotgun braced by his hip.
    “Nope,” the hoarse voice could be heard to say as they were halfway up the stairs. “There is still somebody here!”
    As it said this, there was a streak of light.
    With a thunderous report, fifteen balls of shot bit into the staircase. As he rose into the air, D swept out with his right hand five times.
    Draped in a chameleon sheet—a poncho that could change to blend into any color—the man was already melting back into the floor. However, the instant the needles stitched like white threads through the carpet where he lay, the man let out a choked cry of pain and leapt up from the floor in front of the front door. That was the work of both the needles and D’s murderous air.
    Letting out a scream, the man was about to fire a second shot, but before he could do so a sixth needle pierced him through the solar plexus and jabbed out of his back.
    Racing over to the man after he’d thudded to the floor, D kicked away the shotgun and pressed the tip of his freshly drawn sword to the man’s throat.
    “Get left behind?” asked a hoarse voice that was so different from what the Hunter’s appearance suggested that the waxy-faced man looked up at him. His expression was already a rictus.
    D turned his gaze to the man’s abdomen. His shirt was soaked with a larger bloodstain that had nothing to do with the Hunter’s needle. It looked like a stab wound.
    “Please . . . you gotta help me . . .” the man pleaded, almost weeping.
    “Start talking and we’ll get you a doctor,” the hoarse voice said.
    “There was a fight . . . over getting rid of the hostages . . . and our split of the take . . . I said to kill ’em straightaway . . . and get the hell out of here . . . but Zenon . . . wouldn’t listen. So, that being the case . . . I said . . . give me my cut . . . And the next thing I knew . . . he went for me. I didn’t . . . put up much of a fight . . . what with my right arm . . . winding up like this.”
    The man’s arm was missing from the elbow down.
    “Those bastards . . . left me here . . . with just this sheet . . . and a . . . gun. Told me . . . to slow down . . . anyone chasing ’em . . . Damn them!”
    “Where were they going?” D asked.
    The man’s muddied eyes opened wide. For all his pain, his rictus gave way to a look of